I am a big fan of watching old stuff work again and video takes the proverbial IBM cake. The PS/2 Model 30 came out in the early 1990s and was one of the first machines with an Intel 286 CPU, a 10Mhz monster that could run Sierra games like a champ. And here it is springing to life as if Toad The Wet Sprocket was still big.
The important thing is that this is a new-old-stock unit which means it has never been opened. The guy who discovered it, Rick Chan, posted a full gallery of his unboxing and said he was looking for used vintage parts when he found a warehouse called NYCEOnline in New York full of old machines.
“A company was sitting on a large pile of unsold new-old-stock inventory that’s been sitting in a warehouse and decided to see if the stuff would sell on eBay,” he said. ” They had IBM PS/2’s, NEC Pentium 1’s, Reply 486s, IBM keyboards, mice, and monitors.”
“It was a stroke of luck as I was in the market for a used vintage PC and they happened to have some parts I needed so I contacted them via eBay and then they offered to sell me brand new gear fresh from the 90’s.”
Seeing this sort of stuff boot up without a hitch is a testament to how tank-like these machines really were. Can you imagine a modern laptop surviving twenty plus years let alone booting up with the simple application of power? This is some cool stuff.